Peruvian lawmakers rejected President Dina Boluarte’s call for early elections to be held this year, as ongoing protests have roiled the country. Boluarte has proposed constitutional reform in response.

Boluarte on Friday called for elections to be held in December of this year, in response to protests calling for her resignation, the dissolution of Congress, a new constitution and the release of former President Pedro Castillo from jail.

On Saturday congress rejected the proposal, with 45 votes in favor, 65 against and two abstentions. Left-wing parties, including members of Castillo’s governing alliance, demand including a referendum on creating a constitutional assembly in the next elections. Right-wing parties have sought to maintain an early election in 2024 in order to pass structural reforms before, including reelection for lawmakers.

Yesterday Boluarte called on lawmakers to reconsider her proposal for a vote this year, and they will debate the request today. Boluarte said that if the motion is rejected she would propose early elections via constitutional reform. “Nobody has any interest in clinging to power,” Boluarte said on Friday. “If I am here it is because I fulfilled my constitutional responsibility.”

Boluarte also said she would send lawmakers a proposal for a total reform of the 1993 Constitution, in keeping with protesters’ demands.

At least 65 people have died in seven weeks of demonstrations that have been violently repressed by security forces. Huge swaths of the country have been paralyzed by protests and roadblocks since Castillo’s downfall in early December.

One person was killed in clashes with security forces on Saturday in Lima. Protests were initially focused in rural areas, but last week demonstrators travelled to the country’s capital and have been carrying out marches there.

(El País, AFP, Guardian, Reuters, France 24, La República)

More Peru

• The Guardian reports on “the profound social inequality, grinding poverty and discrimination that lie behind the explosion of rural anger against what many protesters call the corrupt, self-serving and largely white political establishment in the capital, Lima.”
  
  
• The protests have ratcheted up polarization in Peru, as the government has insisted on portraying demonstrators as pawns for drug-traffickers, illegal miners and terrorist groups who are trying to sow chaos, reports the New York Times.
  
  
• At least 25 people died Saturday when a bus carrying 60 passengers plunged over a cliff in northwestern Peru. (CBS)
  
  
• Peru’s Congress has passed a law to require landlords to collect proof of regular migration status from lessees and to pass along data to the National Superintendency of Migration for all foreign-born tenants — Americas Migration Brief.

Regional

• The use of spyware against journalists is increasingly common worldwide, and poses a particular threat in Latin America, reporters already face other forms of harassment and intimidation from both governments and organized crime syndicates, writes Boris Muñoz in the Wilson Center’s Weekly Asado. He points particularly to the case of El Salvador, where investigative reporters have been widely targeted with Pegasus spyware.
  
  
• “Without a coordinated, vigorous response from the region’s media companies, and far greater international support, a surveillance culture will take root in Latin America, intimidating both reporters and their sources and leading to self-censorship and less scrutiny of governments,” warns Muñoz. (Weekly Asado)

Regional Relations

• The U.S. Biden administration said that it would begin negotiations with 11 mostly Latin American nation on Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity. But the agreement is designed to promote regional economic cooperation without offering greater access to the U.S. market for their goods — reflecting the administration’s efforts to reconcile its desire for stronger regional ties with congressional opposition to further trade liberalization, reports the Washington Post.

Venezuela

• Venezuela’s government has proposed new regulations for civil society groups that would effectively strangle the country’s remaining human rights groups, leaving the country a step closer to a police state, reports the Guardian. The new legislation would oblige organizations of civil society to provide the government with all their financial records so that their political agendas and funding can be scrutinized.

Brazil

• Dozens of Indigenous children suffering from malnutrition and acute diseases have been hospitalized in northern Brazil, reports Reuters. Brazil’s government last week declared a medical emergency in the Yanomami territory, after reports of children dying of malnutrition and other diseases caused by illegal gold mining. (See last Monday’s post.)
  
  
• The new administration in Brazil has brought hope for Amazon conservation efforts, but “the euphoria is not blind,” writes Jonathan Watts in the Guardian.
  
  
• Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro faces multiple criminal investigations into wrongdoing during his tenure, but also the likelihood of bans on running for office due to electoral violations, reports the Washington Post.
  
  
• A Washington Post examination of more than 150 videos and images from the Jan. 8 attacks on Brasília reveals that rank-and-file members of the capital police, tasked with securing the streets surrounding government buildings, did little to stop the initial assault.

Cuba

• Shortages of everything from food and medicine to fuel are creating palpable hardship for Cubans, who are living through the country’s worst economic crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union, writes William LeoGrande in World Politics Review. “The depth of the economic crisis has produced an unprecedented level of popular frustration, anxiety and discontent.”

Haiti

• Haitian authorities promised to continue the fight against criminal armed gangs, after “targeted” armed attacks left 14 cops dead in less than two weeks and provoked an armed protest by officers. (See Friday’s post.)
  
  
• On Friday specialized units of the police launched an early morning operation against one of the country’s most powerful gang leaders, Vitelhomme Innocent, whose increasingly expanding territory includes the area not far from the U.S. Embassy and the Police Academy, reports the Miami Herald.

Guatemala

• “Álvaro Colom, who as president of Guatemala from 2008 to 2012 put the country’s forgotten Indigenous communities at the center of his government but faced fierce opposition from the elites, died at 71 — New York Times.

Jordana Timerman / Latin America Daily Briefing
http://latinamericadailybriefing.blogspot